WASHINGTON -- Nobody led.
Not the president of the United States. Not the chief executive of BP. Not Congress, federal agencies or local elected officials. From its fiery beginning, the Gulf oil spill has stood as a concentrated reminder of why, over four decades, Americans have lost faith in nearly every national institution.
Like Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that caused voters to question then-President George W. Bush's credibility, the poisonous geyser at the Gulf's floor threatens to undermine Barack Obama's presidency. More alarmingly, the spill exacerbates the worry that this nation founded on the principle of trust now faces a crisis of faith in its public and private institutions -- government and big business particularly.
"This spill, it's another blow to the body politic," says John Baick, professor of history at Western New England College in Springfield, Mass. It is, he says, another excuse to be cynical and uninvolved -- "exactly the opposite of what has always been the American zeitgeist, a sense that we, collectively and through our institutions, can be something greater than ourselves."
It's hard to summon that rising-sun aspiration when the unemployment rate hovers near double digits. When wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue unabated. When terrorists take aim from inside and outside U.S. borders. When the U.S. Treasury writes massive IOUs to China and public schools write off millions of poorly educated children. - FOX News Story
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